TW09 The Lilliput Legion NEW (22 page)

"I'm waiting."

"For what?"

"For you to go and get Col. Steiger, of course!" the chief administrator said, as if Harris were a total idiot.

Harris lost his patience. "What the hell do I look like to you, an errand boy? You think the acting base commander's going to come running just because you snapped your fingers? In case it's escaped your attention, Dr. Ericson, the base is on full alert and the reason General Forrester is in this hospital is because there have already been several attempts on his life and the last one damn near succeeded! Now I'm here to do a job and I don't intend to leave my post simply because some prima donna doctors have been inconvenienced. Now if you want to speak to the acting base commander, I suggest you go through the proper channels and request an appointment. If Col. Steiger thinks that your request warrants sufficient priority, he'll see you, but frankly, I wouldn't hold my breath. Now get the hell out of my face. I've got work to do."

The chief administrator looked as if he were about to have apoplexy. "How
dare
you speak to me like that? Who do you think you are? I'll have your stripes for this!"

"I haven't
got
any goddamn stripes," said Harris, rolling his eyes. "I'm a commissioned officer. Now I'm really trying not to lose my temper, but--"

"You are the most arrogant, insolent, and uncooperative young man I've ever met!" Ericson said, puffing himself up like a blowfish. "Now I
demand
to see Col. Steiger this very instant, do you hear me? This very instant!"

"That's it," Harris said, "I've had it. If you're not out of here in three seconds, I'm placing you under arrest. One . . . "

"Arrest?"
The administrator’s face turned purple and his eyes bulged.
"On
what charge?"

" Two . . ."

"You must be out of your mind! You wouldn't dare—"

"Three, Donnelly, Kruger, place this man under arrest." As the two men moved in to take the astonished hospital administrator into custody, a well-dressed man hurried past the checkpoint, carrying a briefcase.

"Wait a minute!" Harris called after him.

"Can't stop now!" the man called back over his shoulder as he hurried on.

"I'm Dr. Blake, I'm due in surgery! It's an emergency!"

"Stop!" shouted Harris.

The man ignored him.

"Stop that man! Right now!"

Donnelly and Kruger forgot about the hospital administrator and rushed after Dr. Blake, drawing their weapons as they ran.

"Now see here!" the chief administrator shouted as he hurried after them.

"You men! Stop! You can't do that! That man's on his way to an emergency surgery! You can't—"

"Ericson!" Harris shouted. "Get back here!"

Dr. Blake suddenly dropped his briefcase on the floor, sliding it towards the lift tubes. Then he pivoted around sharply, drawing a plasma pistol from a shoulder holster.

"Look out!" yelled Kruger.

Donnelly dived to the right while Kruger leaped to the left as "Blake" fired.

The plasma charge took Dr. Ericson full in the chest as he came running up behind them. He screamed as the searing heat enveloped him and then an instant later, his charred remains fell to the floor. As the briefcase stopped sliding, there was a faint, explosive pop and the lid flew open. A bright, incandescent glow came from within the briefcase.

Harris fired his weapon and dropped "Blake" in his tracks, but even as he did so, a swarm of Lilliputians equipped with floater paks came rising up out of the briefcase.

"Jesus Christ," Harris said, grabbing for his communicator. "He's got a chronoplate in there! Donnelly, Kruger!
Fire! Fire!"

As the two men laid down a crossfire in the hospital corridor, Harris shouted into the communicator.

"Mayday! Mayday! Assault in progress at Post 1!"

The lift tube doors revolved around and a group of hospital staff members stepped out right into the line of fire. Three of them were killed instantly, the rest dispersed, screaming and beating at their flaming clothing or clutching at themselves where a dozen miniature lasers had sliced through bone and sinew as easily as if it were warm butter.

The Lilliputians swarmed into the lift tube and more kept on coming from the briefcase. Four security men came running down the hall and two of them went down at once. Donnelly, trying to get around the screaming wounded, caught several laser beams in his head and upper torso. He fell to the floor without a sound.

"Harris, this is Steiger. What's going on down there?"

"It's a goddamn invasion!" Harris shouted into the communicator as reinforcements from the other hospital entrance started to arrive upon the scene.

"We're got casualties down here! I've got several men down! They're coming through a temporal transit field, Lilliputians, hundreds of them! I can't get to it! They've gotten to a lift tube and they're headed up your way!"

"Damn
it!" Steiger swore. "How the hell did they get through? Destroy that field, Harris! Cut 'em off, right now, no matter what it takes!"

"Right," said Harris, gritting his teeth. He dropped his communicator and took out his plasma sidearm. "My goddamn fault. My own, stupid, goddamn fault . . ."

He held his plasma pistol out before him, took a deep breath and started running down the hall, right into the line of fire. He screamed, "Get down! Get down!" and fired as he ran, pistol cycling rapidly. The Lilliputians returned his fire, but kept on coming, right into the deadly web of laser beams aiming at the briefcase that a small band of Lilliputians was frantically trying to shove into an open lift tube. Harris kept coming, screaming as he charged them, firing into their midst incinerating them as they swarmed up out of the temporal transit field and destroying the skirmish line they'd quickly set up in the lobby, pinning his men down. He was within fifteen feet of the lift tubes when his plasma pistol cycled through, the charge pak exhausted.

With a roar of rage, he flung it at them and made a flying dive over their heads, crushing a half a dozen of them beneath him as he fell. Smashing at the Lilliputians with his fists a sweeping them out of the way, he scrambled for the briefcase reaching inside and with his last breath, fumbling for the controls. He didn't make it. He died before he could shut down the field.

Steiger was running flat out down the hall, shouting instructions as he went.

"They're on their way up! Cover the stairs and fire exits! Cordon off the area around all access points to this corridor! Nobody gets through! Heads up, people! Here they come!

The first tube came up and the chime rang softly as the door revolved.

Steiger's men fired as it slid open. The interior of the lift tube was slagged with plasma, but not before some of the Lilliputians managed to get out, some coming out low, on foot, firing as they ran, while others came out high, swarming out in their floater paks and rapidly dispersing, firing down at the men in the corridor below them.

At the same time, a cry went up from down the hall. A squad of airborne Lilliputians was coming up the fire stairs. The men covering the stairs immediately opened fire as Steiger ran from one point of conflict to the other. A filament-thin laser beam lanced past his left temple, missing his head by a quarter of an inch.

He threw himself to one side, struck the corridor wall, and spun around. A Lilliputian in a floater pak came down at him from just below the ceiling, like a fighter on a strafing run, his tiny autopulser cycling rapidly. Steiger fired and the Lilliputian burst into flame, then exploded as the tanks on his tiny floater pak went up. Steiger shielded his face as little bits of burning shrapnel rained down on him.

Behind him, down the hall, the corridor was in flames. The Lilliputians were outgunned, but the same plasma weapons that enabled Steiger's men to shoot down such small and rapidly moving targets were also setting the hospital on fire. The sprinklers had gone off, but they were not sufficient to the task and Steiger couldn't risk sending in the fire brigade until the battle was all over. It wasn't simply a question of defeating the tiny invaders; they had to do it within the next few minutes or else the fire would endanger the patients on the lower floors.

He rushed to the stairwell. Several of his men were dead, some killed by the tiny commandos, but at least two were killed by fire from their own men, trying to shoot down airborne Lilliputians who were darting among them like angry wasps. The walls and stairs were blackened and burning as Steiger came through the door, but none of the Lilliputians had gotten past his men. There was a pitched battle in the stairwell as the tiny invaders were being driven back.

And then another cry went up. They were coming out of a second lift tube.

Steiger and his men ran out into the hall. Perhaps two dozen Lilliputians were in full flight, hurtling towards them down the corridor. Steiger's men and the Lilliputians opened fire simultaneously. The man on Steiger's right screamed briefly as a laser burned through his brain and he fell dead on the floor. Half a dozen Lilliputians went up in a blast of plasma, several of them spinning end over end, in flames and out of control, exploding as they hit the corridor walls and their propellant tanks went up.

A few of them got past Steiger and he winced with pain as a laser burned his shoulder, then he was turning and sprinting after them. They were headed down the corridor, straight for Forrester's room. Several of them hovered around the door lock, providing covering fire while two of them aimed their lasers at the lock work. They burned through the door in a matter of seconds. Steiger and his men ran directly into the deadly laser fire, firing into the beams with their plasma weapons to break up their collimation.

Steiger couldn't believe it. The Lilliputians seemed to have no regard whatsoever for their own survival. Like miniature kamikazes, they flew right at him and his men, corkscrewing in erratic loop-de-loops with their jets on full power. It was like trying to shoot down a flight of crazed hummingbirds. The man on Steiger's left fell. Steiger bent down and wrenched the plasma rifle out of the dead man's grasp, but there wasn't even enough time to slap a fresh charge pak into it. He brought up the rifle stock sharply, smacking a Lilliputian in full flight. The Lilliputian caromed off the rifle stock like a baseball and tumbled end over end, his jets damaged and out of control. He slammed into another tiny commando and they exploded in mid air, the shrapnel from the floater paks lacerating Steiger's face. He didn't even feel it. He bolted straight for Forrester's room, but the Lilliputians had already flown inside. They swooped down over the bed, their lasers playing over the shape beneath the covers. As Steiger burst into the room, he heard someone yell, "GET BACK!" and he recoiled as the blue mist of Cherenkov radiation flooded the room.

The awesome weapon's transponder tapped directly into the energy field of a neutron star by means of an internal chronocircuitry link with an Einstein-Rosen Generator in outer space. The result was a limitless supply of "ammunition" in the form of energy leeched through a time warp from a star. The magnetic field generated around the muzzle formed an invisible forcing cone that allowed selective fire—a stream of neutrons fired on either a tight beam or a wide dispersal "spray." The entire room glowed blue for an instant and the attacking Lilliputians disappeared, their atoms disrupted by the neutron stream.

The bed also disappeared, as well as the night table, the drip I.V. stand, the lamp and the entire wall. A cold night wind blew in through the gaping hole where the wall had been. The edges of the hole were as smooth as melted glass.

Forrester stood in the corner of the room, with his back against the wall. He lowered the strange looking weapon. It resembled a small flamethrower, with a knurled pistol grip and an unusually shaped muzzle, only without the attached hose and tanks.

Steiger walked over to the hole in the wall. It was about twelve feet across and eight feet high. Steiger stepped up to the edge and looked down 110 stories. The wind plucked at his hair and clothes, its coolness soothing to the wounds on his face.

"Jesus Christ," he said, softly.

Forrester came up to stand beside him, holding the disruptor in his right hand. It was difficult to believe that something the size of a sawed-off shotgun could have done such damage.

"I think we've got a slight problem here with over penetration," Forrester said, wryly. "Darkness always did overdo things. Sure works, though. If he ever gets all the bugs out, I might actually consider making these standard issue."

Steiger simply stared at him.

"You look terrible," said Forrester.

"Yeah," said Steiger. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then snapped on his communicator. "This is Steiger. All posts, report."

"Post 1, sir. Lafferty here. All secure down here."

"Casualties?"

“Four dead, two wounded, sir. Should I send in the fire brigade, sir? We've got alarms going off all over the place."

"Yeah, send 'em in. Make sure we get all the wounded out and stand by to evacuate patients. Get additional personnel in if you have to. Steiger out."

"Post 2, sir. Cpl. Steinberg reporting. Everybody's dead. I'm the only one left. But we're secure, sir. That is, I'm secure. I guess. I mean . . . hell, I don't know, I—"

"Pull yourself together, Steinberg. You all right?"

"I've been hit, sir, but it's not serious, I don't think. I mean, I'll manage."

"Good man. Hang in there, we'll get someone to you soon as we can. Stand by."

And on it went. Every single post, men dead, men wounded but the attack had been repulsed. Fortunately, none of the hospital patients had been hurt.

The Lilliputians had known exactly where to go and they had struck directly at the top floor. Now they were all dead. They had given no quarter and asked none.

Steiger and Forrester went out into the corridor filled with smoke and flames, steaming from the sprinkler interacting with the heat, blackened from the plasma blasts scarred by laser fire, littered with bodies.